Ellman comments on New York state family law

An article in The Wall Street Journal about the manner in which New York state family law treats professional licenses and degrees as part of community property in divorce actions included comments by Professor Ira Ellman.

The Dec. 23 article, “After Divorce, a Degree is Costly,” by reporter Sophia Hollander, states that a growing number of attorneys and others are asking the New York Legislature to address that treatment, in additional to other matrimonial issues, when it convenes in January. According to Hollander, New York is among a small number of states that considers education and occupational talents as property that can be divided by splitting spouses.

Ellman is the lead author of the American Law Institute’s "Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution," a guide which indicates that numerous exceptions to more mainstream family law exist in New York. But New York isn’t alone in promulgating odd divorce laws, he told Hollander.

“If you ask me what are the two states that are the most peculiar and idiosyncratic about family law in the country, the one I think of besides New York is Texas,” Ellman said. “Texans are very aware of the distinctiveness of their rules, and they’re proud of it. I sometimes think that New Yorkers don’t understand how strange their law is.”

To read the article, click here.

Ellman’s current scholarly projects include an empirical investigation into how people make judgments about appropriate legal rules; he was awarded a large grant from an English foundation to extend that work to the United Kingdom. Ellman is an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Child and Youth Policy at the University of California at Berkeley.